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Creativity ‘closely entwined with mental illness’

“Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.

Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute found.”

Well that explains a lot.

These are the opening two paragraphs of an online article by Michelle Roberts, Health editor, BBC News online. Here is the link for the full picture of how and why you – only creative people are following my blog – are crazy…actually, no, I’ll tack it on the end of this post because if, like me – a perspiring author – you recognised something in those six little words that make up the title of this post and Ms Roberts’ article that struck a chord somewhere deep within your subconscious (something like an Fsharp minor7 – think smashing a clenched fist down on the keyboard of an out of tune piano with your eyes closed) you’ll hurry straight over to read the rest of it for an explanation of those voices, those strange imaginings, those impulses that spring up unbidden to strangle the person next to you on the bus simply because their breathing is too heavy, or they won’t move over, or they’re just there, annoying you, sucking the energy out of you and the rest of my post would have been (more) wasted time for me. (At least being a sufferer of a multiple personality disorder I can say that at least four people read every post I post.)

The weblink was sent to me by a ‘concerned’ friend. He sent no comforting message with it, no words of encouragement, no, ‘Saw this and thought of you. Chin up, mate’. It was just a weblink. He likes to pretend that he’s concerned for me, but I can see right through him. He’s hoping to push me over the edge. He’s always been jealous of my creative output despite the cross I bear that is my fragile mental state. He phones me up at odd hours of the night – when he knows that I’m at my most vulnerable – to ask me if I’ve thought any more about suicide? He won’t leave it.

Well this has back-fired on him because rather than creating further feelings of anxiety and concern to push me deeper into the abyss, the research findings have served to explain something of the way I feel different to most of the people I meet. I only really feel that I’m in the company of kindred spirits when I do my hour a week voluntary work at the local mental institution (The magistrate called it voluntary work, but that’s not the way I see. It was part of my sentencing. How can it be voluntary work if you have to do it or go to prison?) However, sometimes I don’t want to leave. Sometimes they don’t want to let me.

So thanks, mate. You brightened my day. More than that. You got my creative juices flowing. And when I’d sponged them off my trousers – can’t get rid of the smell though – I sat down to compose some song lyrics inspired by recent allegations in the British press that one of our national-media-treasures who died last year, a man who had unrestricted and regular contact with physically disabled, mentally disabled and healthy children, was in fact a serial paedophile. A rapist. A molester of little children. A pervert. And …..a BBC employee! His campaign of terror and child abuse is said to have spanned decades. What the fuck! What a shame that he died without being brought to account. There is nothing funny at all in this revelation (and I’ll laugh at just about anything) but I take one small crumb of satisfaction from the knowledge that he was a frequent visitor to the prime-ministerial weekend residence of Margaret ‘iron cunt’ Thatcher at Christmas. No wonder her son Mark is such a fuck-up. Jimmy probably fixed him good in Santa’s grotto.

So, if you’re still with me here are the lyrics. But first some necessary background. Jimmy Saville had a BBC television programme called Jim’ll Fix It. The theme tune was such a catchy little number that even today, what thirty years later?, I have no problem recalling it. If you can’t or you aren’t old enough to know it then why not check it out on Youtube. The words for my song are designed to go with the tune.